Reconfiguration
by AlwaysPadfoot
Summary: Memories. I guessed that maybe one day they'd fade just like the ink that stained my skin, but that was all it was, a guess at very best.


**Reconfiguration**

**AlwaysPadfoot**

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**AN**: For QLFC. Yes this is from the POV of TMR's Diary.

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I used to belong to a girl named Katherine Alice Thompson until one day in her fourth year I was stolen by a fifth year Slytherin pupil.

From then on it was different. The boy, Tom, left me lying in his trunk for months on end. Occasionally I'd feel him brush past me, when he was looking for something else, but just as quickly as he'd appeared the lid would slam down and I'd be left in the darkness once more.

After a long while I longed to be back with Katherine. Every day she'd take me out, write her innermost feelings on my pages and tuck me away under her pillow so I stayed safe. She took care of me, keeping me hidden, her feelings became mine, her emotions real to me and enclosed within my paper heart.

Now I was broken, dirty, kept in the dark to gather dust. Katherine's emotions trapped to linger forever, festering like a disease in the cool of the Slytherin dormitories. I guessed that maybe one day they'd fade just like the ink that stained my skin, but that was all it was, a guess at very best.

One night in the cold of February, I felt a hand grip my bindings and lift me from the dark trunk of the Slytherin boy, Tom. For a moment I sensed a familiar curiosity, a trait that had been strong inside Kath, but this was an intense curiosity, a dark curiosity. Compelling beyond any measure, I felt it creep in between my pages and I knew that I was once again in the hands of the Slytherin I now knew to be Tom Marvolo Riddle. He took carried me to his bed, his long fingers inspecting my binding with a deep scrutiny before he sat cross-legged on the covers and turned to the first page.

_September 1st 1938_

_The Hat told me I should have been a Slytherin, if I hadn't been so intent on not being like my older brother and chose to be placed anywhere but. Instead I ended up in Ravenclaw, which is okay, I guess. I mean, we get our own rooms, the other three houses share and I kind of like having my own little space, but Ravenclaw's aren't very interesting are they. I supposed that means I'm not interesting either._

For the next two hours, I felt each and every precious memory get ripped away from me as he vanished the words on each page. Every so often Tom would stop to take a sip of water, and I'd try to recall the memories that had been removed, but they were gone and they were never coming back. At the end of the night, I was tossed onto the nightstand, completely emptied of every single memory that held me to…

...held me to.

I couldn't remember what was there. What was rapidly fading from recent memory? I struggled to fixate on anything that had once resided in my pages, even though I appeared to be emulating the feelings that had been there once upon a time. I just had three words to focus on, written in the left hand corner of the first page:

_Tom Marvolo Riddle_.

There were days when none of the feelings bothered me, I simply watched the daily comings and goings of the Slytherin Dorm room from my perch on the nightstand of Tom Riddle. Sometimes it was interesting and others I wished I was back in the depths of his trunk. Then there were days when I was confused, alone, hurt, but I had no idea why. It drove me mad, not knowing why all these feelings were forced upon me and the only person who could ever explain it had yet to write more than three words inside of me.

Of course that all had to change eventually, and it did, on the night of the 13th June Riddle picked me up and left the Slytherin Dormitory. After all those months it was good to feel the cool air of the dungeons breeze across the leather that bound me. Unfortunately the pace at which the boy moved unnerved me and the mixed confusion made my spine tingle.

We didn't go far, just the first-floor corridor, where the boy stopped in front of a large oak door that I recognised to be the girl's toilets. The next thing I heard was the creak of the door, and a girl's sobbing bouncing off the walls inside.

"Who's there?"

I didn't recognise the voice, but Tom moved quickly to the sinks ignoring it. Suddenly a hissing voice, speaking in a foreign language filled the room. Confused, I was dropped into the sink and opened to the centre page, a wand hovering above me as the combined sound of the strange voice and the grinding of rock filled the air.

"I'm telling you to go away," a sniffly voice warned, "This is the girls bathroom!"

When the rock noise stopped, another noise started, like the sliding of some huge body sliding along the floor. I quivered in fear, as vibrations shuddered through the sink. I heard a cubicle unlock, "I'm telling you to GO AW-"

The sniffling voice was cut off and something hit the floor. I barely managed to catch a glimpse of a third year Ravenclaw lying in a heap before an excruciating pain ripped through me, temporarily expelling every thought or feeling and replacing with fear and pain. It felt like every page was being torn and burned as a swelling darkness ran across my surface like a ink spillage. It seeped into the paper, soaking into the spine until my mind clung to the darkness, welcoming it like an old friend.

Suddenly I wasn't in pain any longer. I knew who I was and would forever be. A part of Tom Riddle soul, a remnant preserved inside my paper prison, so that we could live until the end of eternity safe and powerful.

Any memories that could have ever existed about that stupid, confused, little fourth year, Katherine, were expelled.

Permanently.


End file.
